Kate's first learning experience was an outdoor cubby and it ended up being a top secret dinosaur cave!
Equipment Used
Kate’s first cubby was made out of the sand table outside, an old rug, a sheet and some cushions. The children did not play in the cubby at first. Sometimes, educators need to initiate the play and invite children to interact. Lynda climbed into the cubby and straight away children came running and started to play “peek-a-boo” with Lynda through the sheet. Some children grabbed dinosaur figures and pretended the dinosaurs were going to eat Lynda.
Kate then decided to add some dinosaurs inside the cubby to invite the children to explore the cubby. This led to many children playing imaginary games with the dinosaurs in the cubby.
One child Mia, played in the cubby on her own for a very long time. This was an interesting observation because Mia is usually very sociable so we wondered if maybe Mia needed some quiet time away from her friends?
Making the cubby better
One day there was heavy rain and the cubby got drenched! It is important to put resources away if they are outside but also Kate thought about how she could make the cubby waterproof so it could stay up even in the rain. Kate learnt about tarpaulins (“tarps”) which are waterproof sheets. Kate also learnt to place rocks on top of the sheet to secure the sheet. This was Kate’s first experience of Reflective Practice where she looked back on her teaching to see what went well and what could have been done better.
Next Steps
Observations
The next step for Kate’s Dinosaur Cubby Experience, is for Kate to do careful observations of the children’s play so that she can plan for further learning experiences or extensions of the cubby experience.
Children DIY cubbies
Kate can extend on her cubby experience to encourage children to make their own decisions by creating a space for children to make their own cubbies. This can be done by leaving out open ended resources like poles, branches, climbing frames, big blocks, various sheets or blankets or tarps, bulldog clips, string in a big basket as an invitation for the children to build their own cubby. Kate might need to initiate the play by saying to the children “who wants to build a cubby?!” or “who would like to help Kate build a cubby?!”
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